Then my younger brother would break in with a shout of delight atmy stupidity:--

"I'll tell you when, goosie!--

'The next day after never;When the dead ducks fly over the river.'"

But this must have been when I was very small; for I rememberthinking that "the next day after never" would come some time, inmillions of years, perhaps. And how queer it would be to see deadducks flying through the air!

Witches were seldom spoken of in the presence of us children. Wesometimes overheard a snatch of a witch-story, told in whispers,by the flickering firelight, just as we were being sent off tobed. But, to the older people, those legends were too much likerealities, and they preferred not to repeat them. Indeed, it wasover our town that the last black shadow of the dreadfulwitchcraft delusion had rested. Mistress Hale's house was justacross the burying-ground, and Gallows Hill was only two milesaway, beyond the bridge. Yet I never really knew what the "SalemWitchcraft" was until Goodrich's "History of the United States"was put into my hands as a schoolbook, and I read about it there.

Elves and gnomes and air-sprites and genii were no strangers tous, for my sister Emilie--she who heard me say my hymns, andtaught me to write--was mistress of an almost limitless fund ofimaginative lore. She was a very Scheherezade of story-tellers,so her younger sisters thought, who listened to her whiletwilight grew into moonlight, evening after evening, with fasci-nated wakefulness.

Besides the tales that the child-world of all ages is familiarwith,--Red Riding-Hood, the Giant-Killer, Cinderella, Aladdin,the "Sleeping Beauty," and the rest,--she had picked up somewheremost of the folk-stories of Ireland and Scotland, and also thewild legends of Germany, which latter were not then made into thecompact volumes known among juvenile readers of to-day as Grimm's"Household Tales."

Her choice was usually judicious; she omitted the ghosts andgoblins that would have haunted our dreams; although I was nowand then visited by a nightmare-consciousness of being abewitched princess who must perform some impossible task, such asturning a whole roomful of straws into gold, one by one, or elselose my head. But she blended the humorous with the romantic inher selections, so that we usually dropped to sleep in goodspirits, if not with a laugh.

That old story of the fisherman who had done the "Man of the Sea"a favor, and was to be rewarded by having his wish granted, shetold in so quaintly realistic a way that I thought it might allhave happened on one of the islands out in Massachusetts Bay.The fisherman was foolish enough, it seemed, to let his wife doall his wishing for him; and she, unsatisfied still, though shehad been made first an immensely rich woman, and then a greatqueen, at last sent her husband to ask that they two might bemade rulers over the sun, moon, and stars.

As my sister went on with the story, I could see the waves growblack, and could hear the wind mutter and growl, while thefisherman called for the first, second, and then reluctantly, forthe third time:--

"O Man of the Sea,Come listen to me!For Alice my wife,The plague of my life,Has sent me to beg a boon of thee!"

As his call died away on the sullen wind, the mysterious "Man ofthe Sea" rose in his wrath out of the billows, and said,--

"Go back to your old mud hut, and stay there with your wifeAlice, and never come to trouble me again."

I sympathized with the "Man of the Sea" in his righteousindignation at the conduct of the greedy, grasping woman; and themoral of the story remained with me, as the story itself did. Ithink I understood dimly, even then, that mean avarice and self-seeking ambition always find their true level in muddy earth,never among the stars.

So it proved that my dear mother-sister was preparing me for lifewhen she did not know it, when she thought she was only amusingme.

This sister, though only just entering her teens, was tougheningherself by all sorts of unnecessary hardships for whatever mightawait her womanhood. She used frequently to sleep in the garreton a hard wooden sea-chest instead of in a bed. And she would getup before daylight and run over into the burying-ground,barefooted and white-robed (we lived for two or three years inanother house than our own, where the oldest graveyard in townwas only separated from us by our garden fence), "to see if therewere any ghosts there," she told us. Returning noiselessly,--herself a smiling phantom, with long, golden-brown hair ripplingover her shoulders,--she would drop a trophy upon her littlesisters' pillow, in the shape of a big, yellow apple that haddropped from "the Colonel's" "pumpkin sweeting" tree into thegraveyard, close to our fence.

She was fond of giving me surprises, of watching my wonder atseeing anything beautiful or strange for the first time. Once,when I was very little, she made me supremely happy by rousing mebefore four o'clock in the morning, dressing me hurriedly, andtaking me out with her for a walk across the graveyard andthrough the dewy fields. The birds were singing, and the sun wasjust rising, and we were walking toward the east, hand in hand,when suddenly there appeared before us what looked to me like animmense blue wall, stretching right and left as far as I couldsee.

"Oh, what is it the wall of?" I cried.

It was a revelation she had meant for me. "So you did not know itwas the sea, little girl!" she said.

It was a wonderful illusion to My unaccustomed eyes, and I tookin at that moment for the first time something of the realgrandeur of the ocean. Not a sail was in sight, and the blueexpanse was scarcely disturbed by a ripple, for it was the high-tide calm. That morning's freshness, that vision of the sea, Iknow I can never lose.

>From our garret window--and the garret was my usual retreat whenI wanted to get away by myself with my books or my dreams--we hadthe distant horizon-line of the bay, across a quarter of a mileof trees and mowing fields. We could see the white breakersdashing against the long narrow island just outside of theharbor, which I, with my childish misconstruction of names,called "Breakers' Island"; supposing that the grown people hadmade a mistake when they spoke of it as "Baker's." But that far-off, shining band of silver and blue seemed so different from thewhole great sea, stretching out as if into eternity from the feetof the baby on the shore!

The marvel was not lessened when I began to study geography, andcomprehended that the world is round. Could it really be that wehad that endless "Atlantic Ocean" to look at from our window, todance along the edge of, to wade into or bathe in, if we chose?The map of the world became more interesting to me than any ofthe story-books. In my fanciful explorations I out-traveledCaptain Cook, the only voyager around the world with whose namemy childhood was familiar.

The field-paths were safe, and I was allowed to wander off alonethrough them. I greatly enjoyed the freedom of a solitaryexplorer among the seashells and wild flowers.

There were wonders everywhere. One day I picked up a star-fish onthe beach (we called it a "five-finger"), and hung him on a treeto dry, not thinking of him as a living creature. When I wentsome time after to take him down he had elasped with two or threeof his fingers the bough where I laid him, so that he could notbe removed without breaking his hardened shell. My consciencesmote me when I saw what an unhappy looking skeleton I had madeof him.

I overtook the horse-shoe crab on the sands, but I did not liketo turn him over and make him "say his prayers," as some of thechildren did. I thought it must be wicked. And then he looked souncomfortable, imploringly wriggling his claws while he lay uponhis back! I believe I did, however, make a small collection ofthe shells of stranded horseshoe crabs deserted by their tenants.

There were also pretty canary-colored cockle-shells and tinypurple mussels washed up by the tide. I gathered them into myapron, and carried them home, and only learned that they too heldliving inhabitants by seeing a dead snail protruding from everyshell after they had been left to themselves for a day or two.This made me careful to pick up only the empty ones, and therewere plenty of them. One we called a "butterboat"; it hadsomething shaped like a seat across the end of it on the inside.And the curious sea-urchin, that looked as if he was made onlyfor ornament, when he had once got rid of his spines, and thetransparent jelly-fish, that seemed to have no more right to bealive than a ladleful of mucilage,--and the razor-shells, and thebarnacles, and the knotted kelp, and the flabby green sea-aprons,--there was no end to the interesting things I found when I wastrusted to go down to the edge of the tide alone.

The tide itself was the greatest marvel, slipping away sonoiselessly, and creeping back so softly over the flats,whispering as it reached the sands, and laughing aloud "I amcoming!" as, dashing against the rocks, it drove me back to wherethe sea-lovage and purple beach-peas had dared to rootthemselves. I listened, and felt through all my little being thatgreat, surging word of power, but had no guess of its meaning. Ican think of it now as the eternal voice of Law, ever returningto the green, blossoming, beautiful verge of Gospel truth, toconfirm its later revelation, and to say that Law and Gospelbelong together. "The sea is His, and He made it: and His handsformed the dry land."

And the dry land, the very dust of the earth, every day revealedto me some new miracle of a flower. Coming home from school onewarm noon, I chanced to look down, and saw for the first time thedry roadside all starred with lavender-tinted flowers, scarcelylarger than a pin-head; fairy-flowers, indeed; prettier thananything that grew in gardens. It was the red sand-wort; but whya purple flower should be called red, I do not know. I rememberholding these little amethystine blossoms like jewels in the palmof my hand, and wondering whether people who walked along thatroad knew what beautiful things they were treading upon. I neverfound the flower open except at noonday, when the sun washottest. The rest of the time it was nothing but aninsignificant, dusty-leaved weed,--a weed that was transformedinto a flower only for an hour or two every day. It seemed likemagic.

The busy people at home could tell me very little about the wildflowers, and when I found a new one I thought I was itsdiscoverer. I can see myself now leaning in ecstasy over a small,rough-leaved purple aster in a lonely spot on the hill, andthinking that nobody else in all the world had ever beheld such aflower before, because I never had. I did not know then, that theflower-generations are older than the human race.

The commonest blossoms were, after all, the dearest, because theywere so familiar. Very few of us lived upon carpeted floors, butsoft green grass stretched away from our door-steps, all goldenwith dandelions in spring. Those dandelion fields were likeanother heaven dropped down upon the earth, where our feetwandered at will among the stars. What need had we of luxuriousupholstery, when we could step out into such splendor, from thehumblest door?

The dandelions could tell us secrets, too. We blew the fuzz offtheir gray beads, and made them answer our question, "Does mymother want me to come home?" Or we sat down together in thevelvety grass, and wove chains for our necks and wrists of thedandelion-sterns, and "made believe" we were brides, or queens,or empresses.

Then there was the white rock-saxifrage, that filled the crevicesof the ledges with soft, tufty bloom like lingering snow-drifts,our May-flower, that brought us the first message of spring.There was an elusive sweetness in its almost imperceptiblebreath, which one could only get by smelling it in close bunches.Its companion was the tiny four-cleft innocence-flower, thatdrifted pale sky-tints across the chilly fields. Both came to usin crowds, and looked out with us, as they do with the smallgirls and boys of to-day, from the windy crest of Powder HouseHill,--the one playground of my childhood which is left to thechildren and the cows just as it was then. We loved these littledemocratic blossoms, that gathered around us in mobs at our MayDay rejoicings. It is doubtful whether we should have loved thetrailing arbutus any better, had it strayed, as it never did,into our woods.

Violets and anemones played at hide-and-seek with us in shadyplaces. The gay columbine rooted herself among the bleak rocks,and laughed and nodded in the face of the east wind, coquettishlywasting the show of her finery on the frowning air. Bluebirdstwittered over the dandelions in spring. In midsummer,goldfinches warbled among the thistle-tops; and, high above thebird-congregations, the song-sparrow sent forth her clear, warm,penetrating trill,--sunshine translated into music.

We were not surfeited, in those days, with what is calledpleasure; but we grew up happy and healthy, learningunconsciously the useful lesson of doing without. The birds andblossoms hardly won a gladder or more wholesome life from the airof our homely New England than we did.

"Out of the strong came forth sweetness." The Beatitudes are thenatural flowering-forth of the Ten Commandments. And thehappiness of our lives was rooted in the stern, vigorous virtuesof the people we lived among, drawing thence its bloom and song,and fragrance. There was granite in their character and beliefs,but it was granite that could smile in the sunshine and clotheitself with flowers. We little ones felt the firm rock beneathus, and were lifted up on it, to emulate their goodness, and toshare their aspirations.

V.

OLD NEW ENGLAND.

WHEN I first opened my eyes upon my native town, it was alreadynearly two hundred years old, counting from the time when it waspart of the original Salem settlement,--old enough to have gaineda character and an individuality of its own, as it certainly had.We children felt at once that we belonged to the town, as we didto our father or our mother.

The sea was its nearest neighbor, and penetrated to everyfireside, claiming close intimacy with every home and heart. Thefarmers up and down the shore were as much fishermen as farmers;they were as familiar with the Grand Banks of Newfoundland asthey were with their own potato-fields. Every third man you metin the street, you might safely hail as "Shipmate," or "Skipper,"or "Captain." My father's early seafaring experience gave him thelatter title to the end of his life.

It was hard to keep the boys from going off to sea before theywere grown. No inland occupation attracted them. "Land-lubber"was one of the most contemptuous epithets heard from boyish lips.The spirit of adventure developed in them a rough, breezy type ofmanliness, now almost extinct.

Men talked about a voyage to Calcutta, or Hong-Kong, or "up theStraits,"--meaning Gibraltar and the Mediterranean,--as if itwere not much more than going to the next village. It seemed asif our nearest neighbors lived over there across the water; webreathed the air of foreign countries, curiously interblendedwith our own.

The women of well-to-do families had Canton crape shawls andSmyrna silks and Turk satins, for Sabbath-day wear, whichsomebody had brought home for them. Mantel-pieces were adornedwith nautilus and conch-shells, and with branches and fans ofcoral; and children had foreign curiosities and treasures of thesea for playthings. There was one imported shell that we did notvalue much, it was so abundant--the freckled univalve they calleda "prop." Yet it had a mysterious interest for us little ones.We held it to our ears, and listened for the sound of the waves,which we were told that, it still kept, and always would keep. Iremember the time when I thought that the ocean was reallyimprisoned somewhere within that narrow aperture.

We were accustomed to seeing barrels full of cocoa-nuts rolledabout; and there were jars of preserved tropical fruits,tamarinds, ginger-root, and other spicy appetizers, almost ascommon as barberries and cranberries, in the cupboards of mosthousekeepers.

I wonder what has become of those many, many little red "guinea-peas" we had to play with! It never seemed as if they reallybelonged to the vegetable world, notwithstanding their name.

We had foreign coins mixed in with our large copper cents,--allkinds, from the Russian "kopeck" to the "half-penny token" ofGreat Britain. Those were the days when we had half cents incirculation to make change with. For part of our currency was theold-fashioned "ninepence,"--twelve and a half cents, and the"four pence ha'penny,"--six cents and a quarter. There was a gooddeal of Old England about us still.

And we had also many living reminders of strange lands across thesea. Green parrots went scolding and laughing down the thimble-berry hedges that bordered the cornfields, as much at home out ofdoors as within. Java sparrows and canaries and other tropicalsongbirds poured their music out of sunny windows into thestreet, delighting the ears of passing school children longbefore the robins came. Now and then somebody's pet monkey wouldescape along the stone walls and shed-roofs, and try to hide fromhis boy-persecutors by dodging behind a chimney, or by slippingthrough an open scuttle, to the terror and delight of juvenileswhose premises he invaded.

And there were wanderers from foreign countries domesticated inmany families, whose swarthy complexions and un-Caucasianfeatures became familiar in our streets,--Mongolians, Africans,and waifs from the Pacific islands, who always were known to usby distinguished names,--Hector and Scipio, and Julius Caesar andChristopher Columbus. Families of black people were scatteredabout the place, relics of a time when even New England had notfreed her slaves. Some of them had belonged in my great-grand-father's family, and they hung about the old homestead at "TheFarms" long after they were at liberty to go anywhere theypleased. There was a "Rose" and a "Phillis" among them, who cameoften to our house to bring luscious high blackberries from theFarms woods, or to do the household washing. They seemedpathetically out of place, although they lived among us on equalterms, respectable and respected.

The pathos of the sea haunted the town, made audible to every earwhen a coming northeaster brought the rote of the waves in fromthe islands across the harbor-bar, with a moaning like that weheard when we listened for it in the shell. Almost every househad its sea-tragedy. Somebody belonging to it had beenshipwrecked, or had sailed away one day, and never returned.

Our own part of the bay was so sheltered by its islands thatthere were seldom any disasters heard of near home, although thenames of the two nearest--Great and Little Misery--are said tohave originated with a shipwreck so far back in the history ofthe region that it was never recorded.

But one such calamity happened in my infancy, spoken of always bythose who knew its victims in subdued tones;--the wreck of the"Persia." The vessel was returning from the Mediterranean, and ina blinding snow-storm on a wild March night her captain probablymistook one of the Cape Ann light-houses for that on Baker'sIsland, and steered straight upon the rocks in a lonely cove justoutside the cape. In the morning the bodies of her dead crew werefound tossing about with her cargo of paper-manufacturers' rags,among the breakers. Her captain and mate were Beverly men, andtheir funeral from the meeting-house the next Sabbath was anevent which long left its solemnity hanging over the town.

We were rather a young nation at this time. The History of theUnited States could only tell the story of the AmericanRevolution, of the War of 1812, and of the administration ofabout half a dozen presidents.

Our republicanism was fresh and wide-awake. The edge of GeorgeWashington's little hatchet had not yet been worn down to itslatter-day dullness; it flashed keenly on our young eyes and earsin the reading books, and through Fourth of July speeches. TheFather of his Country had been dead only a little more than aquarter of a century, and General Lafayette was still alive; hehad, indeed, passed through our town but a few years before, andhad been publicly welcomed under our own elms and lindens. Evenbabies echoed the names of our two heroes in their prattle.

We had great "training days," when drum and fife took our ears bystorm; When the militia and the Light Infantry mustered andmarched through the streets to the Common with boys and girls attheir heels,--such girls as could get their mother's consent, orthe courage to run off without it.(We never could.)But we alwaysmanaged to get a good look at the show in one way or another.

"Old Election," "'Lection Day" we called it, a lost holiday now,was a general training day, and it came at our most delightfulseason, the last of May. Lilacs and tulips were in bloom, then;and it was a picturesque fashion of the time for little girlswhose parents had no flower-gardens to go around begging a bunchof lilacs, or a tulip or two. My mother always made "'Lectioncake" for us on that day. It was nothing but a kind of sweetenedbread with a shine of egg-and-molasses on top; but we thought itdelicious.

The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day were the only otherholidays that we made much account of, and the former was a farmore well behaved festival than it is in modern times. The bellsrang without stint, and at morning and noon cannon were firedoff. But torpedoes and fire-crackers did not make the highwaysdangerous;--perhaps they were thought too expensive an amusement.Somebody delivered an oration; there was a good deal said about"this universal Yankee nation"; some rockets went up from Salemin the evening; we watched them from the hill, and then went tobed, feeling that we had been good patriots.

There was always a Fast Day, which I am afraid most of us youngerones regarded merely as a day when we were to eat unlimitedquantities of molasses-gingerbread, instead of sitting down toour regular meals.

When I read about Christmas in the English story-books, I wishedwe could have that beautiful holiday. But our Puritan fathersshook their heads at Christmas.

Our Sabbath-school library books were nearly all Englishreprints, and many of the story-books were very interesting. Ithink that most of my favorites were by Mrs. Sherwood. Some ofthem were about life in India,--"Little Henry and his Bearer,"and "Ayah and Lady." Then there were "The Hedge of Thorns;""Theophilus and Sophia;" "Anna Ross," and a whole series oflittle English books that I took great delight in.

I had begun to be rather introspective and somewhat unhealthilyself-critical, contrasting myself meanwhile with my sister Lida,just a little older, who was my usual playmate, and whom Iadmired very much for what I could not help seeing,--her unusualsweetness of disposition. I read Mrs. Sherwood's "Infant'sProgress," and I made a personal application of it, picturingmyself as the naughty, willful "Playful," and my sister Lida asthe saintly little "Peace."

This book gave me a morbid, unhappy feeling, while yet it hadsomething of the fascination of the "Pilgrim's Progress," ofwhich it is an imitation. I fancied myself followed about by afiend-like boy who haunted its pages, called "Inbred-Sin;" andthe story implied that there was no such thing as getting rid ofhim. I began to dislike all boys on his account. There was onewho tormented my sister and me--we only knew him by name--byjumping out at us from behind doorways or fences on our way toschool, making horrid faces at us. "Inbred-Sin," I was certain,looked just like him; and the two, strangely blended in onehideous presence, were the worst nightmare of my dreams. Therewas too much reality about that "Inbreed-Sin." I felt that I wasacquainted with him. He was the hateful hero of the littleallegory, as Satan is of "Paradise Lost."

I liked lessons that came to me through fables and fairy tales,although, in reading Aesop, I invariably skipped the "moral"pinned on at the end, and made one for myself, or else didwithout.

Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's story of "The Immortal Fountain," in the"Girl's Own Book,"--which it was the joy of my heart to read,although it preached a searching sermon to me,--I applied in thesame way that I did the "Infant's Progress." I thought of Lida asthe gentle, unselfish Rose, and myself as the ugly Marion. Shewas patient and obliging, and I felt that I was the reverse. Shewas considered pretty, and I knew that I was the reverse of that,too. I wondered if Lida really had bathed in the ImmortalFountain, and oh, how I wished I could find the way there! But Ifeared that trying to do so would be of no use; the fairies wouldcross their wands to keep me back, and their wings would darkenat my approach.

The book that I loved first and best, and lived upon in mychildhood, was "Pilgrim's Progress." It was as a story that Icared for it, although I knew that it meant something more,--something that was already going on in my own heart and life.Oh, how I used to wish that I too could start off on a pilgrim-age! It would be so much easier than the continual, discouragingstruggle to be good!

The lot I most envied was that of the contented Shepherd Boy inthe Valley of Humiliation, singing his cheerful songs, andwearing "the herb called Heart's Ease in his bosom"; but all theglorious ups and downs of the "Progress" I would gladly haveshared with Christiana and her children, never desiring to turnaside into any "By-Path Meadow" while Mr. Great-Heart led theway, and the Shining Ones came down to meet us along the road.It was one of the necessities of my nature, as a child, to havesome one being, real or ideal, man or woman, before whom Iinwardly bowed down and worshiped. Mr. Great-Heart was theperfect hero of my imagination. Nobody, in books or out of them,compared with him. I wondered if there were really any Mr. Great-Hearts to be met with among living men.

I remember reading this beloved book once in a snow-storm, andlooking up from it out among the white, wandering flakes, with afeeling that they had come down from heaven as its interpreters;that they were trying to tell me, in their airy up-and-down-flight, the story of innumerable souls. I tried to fix my eye onone particular flake, and to follow its course until it touchedthe earth. But I found that I could not. A little breeze wasstirring an the flake seemed to go and return, to descend andthen ascend again, as if hastening homeward to the sky, losingitself at last in the airy, infinite throng, and leaving mefilled with thoughts of that "great multitude, which no man couldnumber, clothed with white robes," crowding so gloriously intothe closing pages of the Bible.

Oh, if I could only be sure that I should some time be one ofthat invisible company! But the heavens were already beginning tolook a great way off. I hummed over one of my best loved hymns,--

"Who are these in bright array?"

and that seemed to bring them nearer again.

The history of the early martyrs, the persecutions of theWaldenses and of the Scotch Covenanters, I read and re-read withlonging emulation! Why could not I be a martyr, too? It would beso beautiful to die for the truth as they did, as Jesus did! Idid not understand then that He lived and died to show us whatlife really means, and to give us true life, like His,--the lifeof love to God with all our hearts, of love to all His humanchildren for His sake;--and that to live this life faithfully isgreater even than to die a martyr's death.

It puzzled me to know what some of the talk I heard about being aChristian could mean. I saw that it was something which only menand women could comprehend. And yet they taught me to say thosedear words of the Master, "Suffer the little children to comeunto Me!" Surely He meant what He said. He did not tell thechildren that they must receive the kingdom of God like grownpeople; He said that everybody must enter into it "as a littlechild."

But our fathers were stalwart men, with many foes to encounter.If anybody ever needed a grown-up religion, they surely did; andit became them well.

Most of our every-day reading also came to us over the sea. MissEdgworth's juvenile stories were in general circulation, and weknew "Harry and Lucy" and "Rosamond" almost as well as we did ourown playmates. But we did not think those English children had sogood a time as we did; they had to be so prim and methodical. Itseemed to us that the little folks across the water never wereallowed to romp and run wild; some of us may have held a vagueidea that this freedom of ours was the natural inheritance ofrepublican children only.

Primroses and cowslips and daisies bloomed in these pleasantstory-books of ours, and we went a-Maying there, with ourtransatlantic playmates. I think we sometimes started off withour baskets, expecting to find those English flowers in our ownfields. How should children be wiser than to look for everybeautiful thing they have heard of, on home ground?

And, indeed, our commonest field-flowers were, many of them,importations from the mother-country--clover, and dandelions, andox-eye daisies. I was delighted when my mother told me one daythat a yellow flower I brought her was a cowslip, for I thoughtshe meant that it was the genuine English cowslip, which I hadread about. I was disappointed to learn that it was a nativeblossom, the marsh-marigold.

My sisters had some books that I appropriated to myself a greatdeal: "Paul and Virginia;" "Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia;""Nina: an Icelandic Tale;" with the "Vicar of Wakefield;" the"Tour to the Hebrides;" "Gulliver's Travels;" the "ArabianNights;" and some odd volumes of Sir Walter Scott's novels.

I read the "Scottish Chiefs"--my first novel when I was aboutfive years old. So absorbed was I in the sorrows of Lady HelenMar and Sir William Wallace, that I crept into a corner wherenobody would notice me, and read on through sunset intomoonlight, with eyes blurred with tears. I did not feel that Iwas doing anything wrong, for I had heard my father say he waswilling his daughters should read that one novel. He probably didnot intend the remark for the ears of his youngest, however.

My appetite for reading was omnivorous, and I devoured a greatmany romances. My sisters took them from a circulating library,many more, perhaps, than came to my parents' knowledge; but itwas not often that one escaped me, wherever it was hidden. I didnot understand what I was reading, to be sure; and that was oneof the best and worst things about it. The sentimentalism of someof those romances was altogether unchildlike; but I did not takemuch of it in. It was the habit of running over pages and pagesto get to the end of a story, the habit of reading without caringwhat I read, that I know to have been bad for my mind. To use anautical expression, my brain was in danger of getting "water-logged." There are so many more books of fiction writtennowadays, I do not see how the young people who try to read onetenth of them have any brains left for every-day use.

One result of my infantile novel-reading was that I did not liketo look at my own face in a mirror, because it was so unlike thatof heroines, always pictured with "high white foreheads" and"cheeks of a perfect oval." Mine was round, ruddy, and laughingwith health; and, though I practiced at the glass a good deal, Icould not lengthen it by puckering down my lips. I quite enviedthe little girls who were pale and pensive-looking, as that wasthe only ladyfied standard in the romances. Of course, the chiefpleasure of reading them was that of identifying myself withevery new heroine. They began to call me a "bookworm" at home. Idid not at all relish the title.

It was fortunate for me that I liked to be out of doors a greatdeal, and that I had a brother, John, who was willing to have mefor an occasional companion. Sometimes he would take me with himwhen be went huckleberrying, up the rural Montserrat Road,through Cat Swamp, to the edge of Burnt Hills and Beaver Pond.He had a boy's pride in explaining these localities to me, makingme understand that I had a guide who was familiar with every inchof the way. Then, charging me not to move until he came back, hewould leave me sitting alone on a great craggy rock, while hewent off and filled his basket out of sight among the bushes.Indeed, I did not want to move, it was all so new andfascinating. The tall pine-trees whispering to each other acrossthe sky-openings above me, the graceful ferns, the velvet mossesdotted with scarlet fairy-cups, as if the elves had just spreadtheir table for tea, the unspeakable charm of the spice-breathingair, all wove a web of enchantment about me, from which I had nowish to disentangle myself. The silent spell of the woods heldme with a power stronger even than that of the solemn-voiced sea.Sometimes this same brother would get permission to take me on alonger excursion,--to visit the old homestead at "The Farms."Three or four miles was not thought too long a walk for a healthychild of five years; and that road, in the old time, led througha rural Paradise, beautiful at every season,--whether it were thetime of song-sparrows and violets, of wild roses, of coral-hungbarberry-bushes, or of fallen leaves and snow-drifts. Thewildness of the road, now exchanged for elegant moderncultivation, was its great charm to us. We stopped at the CoveBrook to hear the cat-birds sing, and at Mingo's Beach to revelin the sudden surprise of the open sea, and to listen to thechant of the waves, always stronger and grander there thananywhere along the shore. We passed under dark wooded cliffs outinto sunny openings, the last of which held under its skirtingpines the secret of the prettiest woodpath to us in all theworld, the path to the ancestral farmhouse.

We found children enough to play with there,--as numerous afamily as our own. We were sometimes, I fancy, the added drop toomuch of already overflowing juvenility. Farther down the road,where the cousins were all grown-up men and women, Aunt Betsey'scordial, old-fashioned hospitality sometimes detained us a day ortwo. We watched the milking, and fed the chickens, and faredgloriously. Aunt Betsey could not have done more to entertain us,had we been the President's children.

I have always cherished the memory of a certain pair of large-bowed spectacles that she wore, and of the green calash, held bya ribbon bridle, that sheltered her head, when she walked up fromthe shore to see us, as she often did. They announced to us theapproach of inexhaustible kindliness and good cheer. We took in ahome-feeling with the words "Aunt Betsey" then and always. Shehad just the husband that belonged to her in my Uncle David, anupright man, frank-faced, large-hearted, and spiritually minded.He was my father's favorite brother, and to our branch of thefamily "The Farms" meant "Uncle David and Aunt Betsey."

My brother John's plans for my entertainment did not alwaysharmonize entirely with my own ideas. He had an inventive mind,and wanted me to share his boyish sports. But I did not like toride in a wheelbarrow, nor to walk on stilts, nor even to coastdown the hill on his sled and I always got a tumble, if I tried,for I was rather a clumsy child; besides, I much preferred girls'quieter games.

We were seldom permitted to play with any boys except ourbrothers. I drew the inference that our boys must be a great dealbetter than "the other boys." My brother John had some fine play-fellows, but he seemed to consider me in the way when they werehis guests. Occasionally we would forget that the neighbor-boyswere not girls, and would find ourselves all playing together indelightful unconsciousness; although possibly a thought, likethat of the "Ettrick Shepherd," may now and then have flittedthrough the mind of some masculine juvenile:--

"Why the boys should drive awayLittle sweet maidens from the play,Or love to banter and fight so well,--That Is the thing I never could tell."

One, day I thoughtlessly accepted an invitation to get through agap in the garden-fence, to where the doctor's two boys werepreparing to take an imaginary sleigh-ride in midsummer. Thesleigh was stranded among tall weeds an cornstalks, but I waspolitely handed in by the elder boy, who sat down by my side andtucked his little brother in front at our feet, informing me thatwe were father and mother and little son, going to take a ride toNewburyport. He had found an old pair of reins and tied them toa saw-horse, that he switched and "Gee-up"-ed vigorously. Thejourney was as brief as delightful. I ran home feeling like theheroine of an elopement, asking myself meanwhile, "What would mybrother John say if he knew I had been playing with boys?" He wasvery particular about his sisters' behavior. But I incautiouslysaid to one sister in whom I did not usually confide, that Ithought James was the nicest boy in the lane, and that I likedhis little brother Charles, too. She laughed at me sounmercifully for making the remark, that I never dared looktowards the gap in the fence again, beyond which I could hear theboys' voices around the old sleigh where they were playing,entirely forgetful of their former traveling companion. Still, Icontinued to think that my courteous cavalier, James, was thenicest boy in the lane.

My brother's vigilant care of his two youngest sisters was oncethe occasion to them of a serious fright. My grandfather--thesexton--sometimes trusted him to toll the bell for a funeral. Inthose days the bell was tolled for everybody who died. John wassocial, and did not like to go up into the belfry and stay anhour or so alone, and as my grandfather positively forbade him totake any other boy up there, he one day got permission for us twolittle girls to go with him, for company. We had to climb up agreat many stairs, and the last flight was inclosed by a roughdoor with a lock inside, which he was charged to fasten, so thatno mischievous boys should follow.

It was strange to be standing up there in the air, gazing overthe balcony-railing down into the street, where the men and womenlooked so small, and across to the water and the ships in theeast, and the clouds and hills in the west! But when he struckthe tongue against the great bell, close to our ears, it was morethan we were prepared for. The little sister, scarcely threeyears old, screamed and shrieked,--

"I shall be stunned-ded! I shall be stunned-ded!" I do not knowwhere she had picked up that final syllable, but it made herterror much more emphatic. Still the great waves of solem

sound went eddying on, over the hills and over the sea, and wehad to hear it all, though we stopped our ears with our fingers.It was an immense relief to us when the last stroke of thepassing-bell was struck, and John said we could go down.

He took the key from his pocket and was fitting it into the lock,when it slipped, beyond our reach. Now the little sister criedagain, and would not be pacified; and when I looked up and caughtJohn's blank, dismayed look, I began to feel like crying, too.The question went swiftly through my mind,--How many days can westay up here without starving to death?--for I really thought weshould never get down out of our prison in the air: never see ourmother's face again.

But my brother's wits returned to him. He led us back to thebalcony, and shouted over the railing to a boy in the street,making him understand that he must go and inform my father thatwe were locked into the belfry. It was not long before we sawboth him and my grandfather on their way to the church. They cameup to the little door, and told us to push with our unitedstrength against it. The rusty lock soon yielded, and how good itwas to look into those two beloved human faces once more! But welittle girls were not invited to join my brother again when hetolled the bell: if we had been, I think we should have promptlydeclined the invitation.

Many of my childish misadventures came to me in connection withmy little sister, who, having been much indulged, too it forgranted that she could always have what she wanted.

One day we two were allowed to take a walk together; I, as theolder, being supposed to take care of her. Although we were goingtowards the Cove, over a secluded road, she insisted upon wearinga brand-new pair of red morocco boots. All went well until wecame to a bog by the roadside, where sweet-flag and cat-tailsgrew. Out in the middle of the bog, where no venturesome boy hadever attempted their seizure, there were many tall, fine-lookingbrown cat-tails growing. She caught sight of them, and before Isaw what she was doing, she had shot from my side like an arrowfrom the bow, and was far out on the black, quaking surface, thatat first upheld her light weight. I stood petrified with horror.I knew all about that dangerous place. I had been told thatnobody had ever found out how deep that mud was. I was utteredjust one imploring "Come back!" when she turned to me with ashriek, throwing up her arms towards me. She was sinking! Therewas nobody in sight, and there was no time to think. I ran, orrather flew, across the bog, with just one thought in my mind, "Ihave got to get her out!" Some angel musthave prevented me from making a misstep, and sinking with her. Ifelt the power of a giant suddenly taking possession of my smallframe. Quicker than I could tell of it, I had given onetremendous pull (she had already sunk above her boot-tops), andhad dragged her back to the road. It is a marvel to me now how I--a child of scarcely six years--succeeded in rescuing her. Itdid not seem to me as if I were doing it myself, but as if someunseen Power had taken possession of me for a moment, and made medo it. And I suppose that when we act from a sudden impulse tohelp another out of trouble, it never is ourself that does thegood deed. The Highest Strength just takes us and uses us. Icertainly felt equal to going straight through the earth to Chinaafter my little sister, if she had stink out of sight.

We were two miserable looking children when we reached home, thesticky ooze having changed her feet into unmanageable lumps ofmud, with which my own clothes also were soiled. I had to drag orcarry her all the way, for she could not or would not walk astep. And alas for the morocco boots! They were never again red.I also received a scolding for not taking better care of mylittle sister, and I was not very soon allowed again to have hercompany in my rambles.

We usually joined with other little neighbor girls in some out-of-door amusement near home. And our sports, as well as ourbooks, had a spice of Merry Old England. They were full of kingsand queens, and made sharp contrasts, as well as odd mixtures,with the homeliness of our everyday life.

One of them, a sort of rhymed dialogue, began with the couplet:--

"Queen Anne, Queen Anne, she sits in the sun,As fair as a lady, as white as a nun."

If "Queen Anne" did not give a right guess as to which hand ofthe messenger held the king's letter to her, she was contempt-uously informed that she was

"as brown as a bun."

In another name, four little girls joined hands across, incouples, chanting:--

"I wish my father were a king,I wish my mother were a queen,And I a little companion!"

concluding with a close embrace in a dizzying whirl, breathlesslyshouting all together,--

"A bundle of fagots! A bundle of fagots!"

In a third, which may have begun with a juvenile reacting of theColonial struggle for liberty, we ranged ourselves under twoleaders, who made an archway over our heads of their lifted handsand arms, saying, as we passed beneath,--

"Lift up the gates as high as the sky,And let King George and his army pass by!"

We were told to whisper "Oranges" or "Lemons" for a pass-word;and "Oranges" always won the larger enlistment, whether Britishor American.

And then there was "Grandmother Gray," and the

"Old woman from Newfoundland,With all her children in her hand;"and the

"Knight from SpainInquiring for your daughter Jane,"

and numberless others, nearly all of them bearinga distinct Old World flavor. One of our play-places was anunoccupied end of the burying-ground, overhung by the Colonel'sapple-trees and close under his wall, so that we should not betoo near the grave-stones.

I do not think that death was at all a real thing to me or to mybrothers and sisters at this time. We lived so near the grave-yard that it seemed merely the extension of our garden. Wewandered there at will, trying to decipher the moss-growninscriptions, and wondering at the homely carvings of cross-bonesand cherubs and willow-trees on the gray slate-stones. I did notassociate those long green mounds with people who had once lived,though we were careful, having been so instructed, not to step onthe graves. To ramble about there and puzzle ourselves with thenames and dates, was like turning over the pages of a curious oldbook. We had not the least feeling of irreverence in taking theedge of the grave-yard for our playground. It was known as "theold burying-ground"; and we children regarded it with a sort ofaffectionate freedom, as we would a grandmother, because it wasold.

That, indeed, was one peculiar attraction of the town itself; itwas old, and it seemed old, much older than it does now. Therewas only one main street, said to have been the first settlers'cowpath to Wenham, which might account for its zigzagpicturesqueness. All the rest were courts or lanes.

The town used to wear a delightful air of drowsiness, as if shehad stretched herself out for an afternoon nap, with her headtowards her old mother, Salem, and her whole length recliningtowards the sea, till she felt at her feet, through her greenrobes, the clip of the deep water at the Farms. All her elderchildren recognized in her quiet steady-going ways a maternalunity and strength of character, as of a town that understood herown plans, and had settled down to peaceful, permanent habits.Herspirit was that of most of our Massachusetts coast-towns. Theywere transplanted shoots of Old England. And it was the voice ofa mother-country more ancient than their own, that littlechildren heard crooning across the sea in their cradle-hymns andnursery-songs.

VI.GLIMPSES OF POETRY.

OUR close relationship to Old England was sometimes a littlemisleading to us juveniles. The conditions of our life wereentirely different, but we read her descriptive stories and sangher songs as if they were true for us, too. One of the firstthings I learned to repeat--I think it was in the spelling-book--began with the verse:--

"I thank the goodness and the graceThat on my birth has smiled,And made me, in these latter days,A happy English child."

"How many children in the streetHalf naked I behold;While I am clothed from head to feet,And sheltered from the cold."

Now a ragged, half-clothed child, or one that could really becalled poor, in the extreme sense of the word, was the rarest ofall sights in a thrifty New England town fifty years ago. I usedto look sharply for those children, but I never could see one.And a beggar! Oh, if a real beggar would come along, like the onedescribed in

"Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,"

what a wonderful event that would be! I believe I had morecuriosity about a beggar, and more ignorance, too, than about aking. The poem read:--

"A pampered menial drove me from the door."

What sort of creature could a "pampered menial" be? Nothing thathad ever come under our observation corresponded to the words.Nor was it easy for us to attach any meaning to the word"servant." There were women who came in occasionally to do thewashing, or to help about extra work. But they were decentlyclothed, and had homes of their own, more or less comfortable,and their quaint talk and free-and-easy ways were often as muchof a lift to the household as the actual assistance theyrendered.

I settled down upon the conclusion that "rich" and "poor" werebook-words only, describing something far off, and having nothingto do with our every-day experience. My mental definition of"rich people," from home observation, was something like this:People who live in three-story houses, and keep their greenblinds closed, and hardly ever come out and talk with the folksin the street. There were a few such houses in Beverly, and agreat many in Salem, where my mother sometimes took me for ashopping walk. But I did not suppose that any of the people wholived near us were very rich, like those in books.

Everybody about us worked, and we expected to take hold of ourpart while young. I think we were rather eager to begin, for webelieved that work would make men and women of us.

I, however, was not naturally an industrious child, but quite thereverse. When my father sent us down to weed his vegetable-gardenat the foot of the lane, I, the youngest of his weeders, liked togo with the rest, but not for the sake of the work or the pay. Igenerally gave it up before I had weeded half a bed. It made meso warm! and my back did ache so! I stole off into the shade ofthe great apple-trees, and let the west wind fan my hot cheeks,and looked up into the boughs, and listened to the many, manybirds that seemed chattering to each other in a language of theirown. What was it they were saying? and why could not I understandit? Perhaps I should, sometime. I had read of people who did, infairy tales.

When the others started homeward, I followed. I did not mindtheir calling me lazy, nor that my father gave me only onetarnished copper cent, while Lida received two or three brightones. I had had what I wanted most. I would rather sit under theapple-trees and hear the birds sing than have a whole handful ofbright copper pennies. It was well for my father and his gardenthat his other children were not like me.

The work which I was born to, but had not begun to do, wassometimes a serious weight upon my small, forecasting brain.

One of my hymns ended with the lines,--

"With books, and work, and healthful play,May my first years be passed,That I may give, for every day,Some good account at last."

I knew all about the books and the play; but the work,--howshould I ever learn to do it?

My father had always strongly emphasized his wish that all hischildren, girls as well as boys, should have some independentmeans of self-support by the labor of their hands; that every oneshould, as was the general custom, "learn a trade." Tailor'swork--the finishing of men's outside garments--was the "tradelearned most frequently by women in those days, and one or moreof my older sisters worked at it; I think it must have been athome, for I somehow or somewhere got the idea, while I was asmall child, that the chief end of woman was to make clothing formankind.

This thought came over me with a sudden dread one Sabbath morningwhen I was a toddling thing, led along by my sister, behind myfather and mother. As they walked arm in arm before me, I liftedmy eyes from my father's heels to his head, and mused: "How tallhe is! and how long his coat looks! and how many thousand,thousand stitches there must be in his coat and pantaloons! And Isuppose I have got to grow up and have a husband, and put allthose little stitches into his coats and pantaloons. Oh, I never,never can do it!" A shiver of utter discouragement went throughme. With that task before me, it hardly seemed to me as if lifewere worth living. I went on to meeting, and I suppose I forgotmy trouble in a hymn, but for the moment it was real. It was notthe only time in my life that I have tired myself out withcrossing bridges to which I never came. real. It was not the only time inmylife that I have tired myself out with crossing brid,es to which I nevercame.

Another trial confronted me in the shape of an ideal butimpossible patchwork quilt. We learned to sew patchwork atschool, while we were learning the alphabet; and almost everygirl, large or small, had a bed-quilt of her own begun, with aneye to future house furnishing. I was not over fond of sewing,but I thought it best to begin mine early.

So I collected a few squares of calico, and undertook to put themtogether in my usual independent way, without asking direction.I liked assorting those little figured bits of cotton cloth, forthey were scraps of gowns I had seen worn, and they reminded meof the persons who wore them. One fragment, in particular, waslike a picture to me. It was a delicate pink and brown sea-mosspattern, on a white ground, a piece of a dress belonging to mymarried sister, who was to me bride and angel in One. I alwayssaw her face before me when I unfolded this scrap,--a face withan expression truly heavenly in its loveliness. Heaven claimedher before my childhood was ended. Her beautiful form was laid torest in mid-ocean, too deep to be pillowed among the soft sea-mosses. But she lived long enough to make a heaven of my child-hood whenever she came home.

One of the sweetest of our familiar hymns I always think of asbelonging to her, and as a still unbroken bond between her spiritand mine. She had come back to us for a brief visit, soon afterher marriage, with some deep, new experience of spiritualrealities which I, a child of four or five years, felt in thevery tones of her voice, and in the expression of her eyes.

My mother told her of my fondness for the hymn-book, and sheturned to me with a smile and said, "Won't you learn one hymn forme--one hymn that I love very much?"

Would I not? She could not guess how happy she made me by wishingme to do anything for her sake. The hymn was,--

"Whilst Thee I seek, protecting Power."

In a few minutes I repeated the whole to her and its own beauty,pervaded with the tenderness of her love for me, fixed it at onceindelibly in my memory. Perhaps I shall repeat it to her again,deepened with a lifetime's meaning, beyond the sea, and beyondthe stars.

I could dream over my patchwork, but I could not bring it intoconventional shape. My sisters, whose fingers had been educated,called my sewing "gobblings." I grew disgusted with it myself,and gave away all my pieces except the pretty sea-moss pattern,which I was not willing to see patched up with common calico. Itwas evident that I should never conquer fate with my needle.

Among other domestic traditions of the old times was the sayingthat every girl must have a pillow-case full of stockings of herown knitting before she was married. Here was another mountainbefore me, for I took it for granted that marrying was inevitable--one of the things that everybody must do, like learning toread, or going to meeting.

I began to knit my own stockings when I ways six or seven yearsold, and kept on, until home-made stockings went out of fashion.The pillow-case full, however, was never attempted, any more thanthe patchwork quilt. I heard somebody say one day that there mustalways be one "old maid" in every family of girls, and I acceptedthe prophecy of some of my elders, that I was to be that one. Iwas rather glad to know that freedom of choice in the matter waspossible.

One day, when we younger ones were hanging about my golden-hairedand golden-hearted sister Emilie, teasing her with wonderingquestions about our future, she announced to us (she had reachedthe mature age of fifteen years) that she intended to be an oldmaid, and that we might all come and live with her. Some onelistening reproved her, but she said, "Why, if they fit them-selves to be good, helpful, cheerful old maids, they willcertainly be better wives, if they ever are married," and thatmaxim I laid by in my memory for future contingencies, for Ibelieved in every word she ever uttered. She herself, however,did not carry out her girlish intention. "Her children arise upand call her blessed; her husband also; and he praiseth her." Butthe little sisters she used to fondle as her "babies have neverallowed their own years nor her changed relations to cancel theirclaim upon her motherly sympathies.

I regard it as a great privilege to have been one of a largefamily, and nearly the youngest. We had strong family resem-blances, and yet no two seemed at all alike. It was likerehearsing in a small world each our own part in the great oneawaiting us. If we little ones occasionally had some severesnubbing mixed with the petting and praising and loving, that waswholesome for us, and not at all to be regretted.

Almost every one of my sisters had some distinctive aptitude withher fingers. One worked exquisite lace-embroidery; another had aknack at cutting and fitting her doll's clothing so perfectlythat the wooden lady was always a typical specimen of the genteeldoll-world; and another was an expert at fine stitching, sodelicately done that it was a pleasure to see or to wear anythingher needle had touched. I had none of these gifts. I looked onand admired, and sometimes tried to imitate, but my effortsusually ended in defeat and mortification.

I did like to knit, however, and I could shape a stockingtolerably well. My fondness for this kind of work was chieflybecause it did not require much thought. Except when there was"widening" or "narrowing" to be done, I did not need to keep myeyes upon it at all. So I took a book upon my lap and read, andread, while the needles clicked on, comforting me with thereminder that I was not absolutely unemployed, while yet I washaving a good time reading.

I began to know that I liked poetry, and to think a good dealabout it at my childish work. Outside of the hymn-book, the firstrhymes I committed to memory were in the "Old Farmer's Almanac,"files of which hung in the chimney corner, and were an inexhaust-ible source of entertainment to us younger ones.

My father kept his newspapers also carefully filed away in thegarret, but we made sad havoc among the "Palladiums" and otherjournals that we ought to have kept as antiquarian treasures.We valued the anecdote column and the poet's corner only; thesewe clipped unsparingly for our scrap-books.

A tattered copy of Johnson's large Dictionary was a great delightto me, on account of the specimens of English versification whichI found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were somany poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow;and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting itsjingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, andthinking what a charming occupation it must be to "make up"verses.

I made my first rhymes when I was about seven years old. Mybrother John proposed "writing poetry" as a rainy-day amusement,one afternoon when we two were sent up into the garret toentertain ourselves without disturbing the family. He soon grewtired of his unavailing attempts, but I produced two stanzas, thefirst of which read thus:--

"One summer day, said little Jane,We were walking down a shady lane,When suddenly the wind blew high,And the red lightning flashed in the sky.The second stanza descended in a dreadfully abrupt anti-climax;but I was blissfully ignorant of rhetoricians' rules, andsupposed that the rhyme was the only important thing. It mayamuse my child-readers if I give them this verse too:

"The peals of thunder, how they rolled!And I felt myself a little cooled;For I before had been quite warm;But now around me was a storm."

My brother was surprised at my success, and I believe I thoughtmy verses quite fine, too. But I was rather sorry that I hadwritten them, for I had to say them over to the family, and thenthey sounded silly. The habit was formed, however, and I went onwriting little books of ballads, which I illustrated with colorsfrom my toy paintbox, and then squeezed down into the cracks ofthe garret floor, for fear that somebody would find them.

My fame crept out among the neighbors, nevertheless. I was eveninvited to write some verses in young lady's album; and AuntHannah asked me to repeat my verses to her. I considered myselfgreatly honored by both requests.

My fondness for books began very early. At the age of four I hadformed the plan of collecting a library. Not of limp, paper-covered picture-books, such as people give to babies; no! Iwanted books with stiff covers, that could stand up side by sideon a shelf, and maintain their own character as books. But I didnot know how to make a beginning, for mine were all of the kindmanufactured for infancy, and I thought they deserved no betterfate than to be tossed about among my rag-babies and playthings.

One day, however, I found among some rubbish in a corner avolume, with one good stiff cover; the other was missing. It didnot look so very old, nor as if it had been much read; neitherdid it look very inviting to me as I turned its leaves. On itstitle-page I read "The Life of John Calvin." I did not know whohe was, but a book was a book to me, and this would do as well asany to begin my library with. I looked upon it as a treasure, andto make sure of my claim, I took it down to my mother and timidlyasked if I might have it for my own. She gave me in reply arather amused "Yes," and I ran back happy, and began my libraryby setting John Calvin upright on a beam under the garret eaves,my "make-believe" book-case shelf.

I was proud of my literary property, and filled out the shelf infancy with a row of books, every one of which should have twostiff covers. But I found no more neglected volumes that I couldadopt. John Calvin was left to a lonely fate, and am afraid thatat last the mice devoured him. Before I had quite forgotten him,however, I did pick up one other book of about his size, and inthe same one-covered condition; and this attracted me more,because it was in verse. Rhyme had always a sort of magneticpower over me, whether I caught at any idea it contained or not.

This was written in the measure which I afterwards learned wascalled Spenserian. It was Byron's "Vision of Judgment," andSouthey's also was bound up with it.Southey's hexameters were too much of a mouthful for me, butByron's lines jingled, and apparently told a story aboutsomething. St. Peter came into it, and King George the Third;neither of which names meant anything to me; but the sceneryseemed to be somewhere up among the clouds, and I, unsuspiciousof the author's irreverence, took it for a sort of semi-Biblicalfairy tale.

There was on my mother's bed a covering of pink chintz, picturedall over with the figure of a man sitting on a cloud, holding abunch of keys. I put the two together in my mind, imagining thechintz counterpane to be an illustration of the poem, or the poeman explanation of the counterpane. For the stanza I liked bestbegan with the words,--

"St.Peter sat at the celestial gate,And nodded o'er his keys."

I invented a pronunciation for the long words, and went about thehouse reciting grandly,--

"St. Peter sat at the kelestikal gate,And nodded o'er his keys."

That volume, swept back to me with the rubbish of Time, stillreminds me, forlorn and half-clad, of my childish fondness forits mock-magnificence.

John Calvin and Lord Byron were rather a peculiar combination, asthe foundation of an infant's library; but I was not aware of anyunfitness or incompatibility. To me they were two brother-books,like each other in their refusal to wear limp covers.

It is amusing to recall the rapid succession of contrasts in onechild's tastes. I felt no incongruity between Dr. Watts andMother Goose. I supplemented "Pibroch of Donuil Dhu" and

"Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day,"

with "Yankee Doodle" and the "Diverting History of John Gilpin;"and with the glamour of some fairy tale I had just read stillhaunting me, I would run out of doors eating a big piece of breadand butter,--sweeter than any has tasted since,--and would jumpup towards the crows cawing high above me, cawing back to them,and half wishing I too were a crow to make the sky ring with myglee.

After Dr. Watts's hymns the first poetry I took great delight ingreeted me upon the pages of the "American First Class Book,"handed down from older pupils in the little private school whichmy sisters and I attended when Aunt Hannah had done all she couldfor us. That book was a collection of excellent literaryextracts, made by one who was himself an author and a poet. Itdeserved to be called "first-class" in another sense than thatwhich was understood by its title. I cannot think that modernreading books have improved upon it much. It contained poems fromWordsworth, passages from Shakespeare's plays, among them thepathetic dialogue between Hubert and little Prince Arthur, whoseappeal to have his eyes spared, brought many a tear to my own.Bryant's "Waterfowl" and "Thanatopsis" were there also; andNeal's,--

"There's a fierce gray bird with a bending beak,"

that the boys loved so dearly to "declaim;" and another poem bythis last author, which we all liked to read, partly from achildish love of the tragic, and partly for its graphicdescription of an avalanche's movement:--

"Slowly it came in its mountain wrath,And the forests vanished before its path;And the rude cliffs bowed; and the waters fled,--And the valley of life was the tomb of the dead."

In reading this, "Swiss Minstrel's Lament over the Ruins ofGoldau," I first felt my imagination thrilled with the terriblebeauty of the mountains--a terror and a sublimity which attractedmy thoughts far more than it awed them. But the poem in whichthey burst upon me as real presences, unseen, yet known in theirremote splendor as kingly friends before whom I could bow, yetwith whom I could aspire,--for something like this I thinkmountains must always be to those who truly love them,--wasColeridge's "Mont Blanc before Sunrise," in this same "FirstClass Book." I believe that poetry really first took possessionof me in that poem, so that afterwards I could not easily mistakethe genuineness of its ring, though my ear might not besufficiently trained to catch its subtler harmonies. This greatmountain poem struck some hidden key-note in my nature, and Iknew thenceforth something of what it was to live in poetry, andto have it live in me. Of course I did not consider my ownfoolish little versifying poetry. The child of eight or nineyears regarded her rhymes as only one among her many games andpastimes.

But with this ideal picture of mountain scenery there came to mea revelation of poetry as the one unattainable something which Imust reach out after, because I could not live without it. Thethought of it was to me like the thought of God and of truth. Toleave out poetry would be to lose the real meaning of life. Ifelt this very blindly and vaguely, no doubt; but the feeling wasdeep. It was as if Mont Blanc stood visibly before me, while Imurmured to myself in lonely places --

"Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!Who made you glorious as the gates of heavenBeneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sunClothe you with rainbows? Who with lovely flowersOf living blue spread garlands at your feet?"

And then the

"Pine groves with their soft and soul-like sound"gave glorious answer, with the streams and torrents, and mychild-heart in its trance echoed the poet's invocation,--

"Rise, like a cloud of incense from the earth!And tell the stars, and tell the rising sun,Earth, with her thousand voices, calls on GOD!"

I have never visited Switzerland, but I surely saw the Alps, withColeridge, in my childhood. And although I never stood face toface with mountains until I was a mature woman, always, afterthis vision of them, they were blended with my dream of whateveris pure and lofty in human possibilities,--like a white idealbeckoning me on.

Since I am writing these recollections for the young, I may sayhere that I regard a love for poetry as one of the most needfuland helpful elements in the life-outfit of a human being. Itwas the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil towhich I was shut in much earlier than most young girls are, thatthe poetry I held in my memory breathed its enchanted atmospherethrough me and around me, and touched even dull drudgery with itssunshine.

Hard work, however, has its own illumination--if done as dutywhich worldliness has not; and worldliness seems to be thegreatest temptation and danger Of young people in this genera-tion. Poetry is one of the angels whose presence will drive outthis sordid demon, if anything less than the Power of the Highestcan. But poetry is of the Highest. It is the Divine Voice,always, that we recognize through the poet's, whenever he mostdeeply moves our souls.

Reason and observation, as well as my own experience, assure mealso that it is great--poetry even the greatest--which theyoungest crave, and upon which they may be fed, because it is thesimplest. Nature does not write down her sunsets, her starryskies, her mountains, and her oceans in some smaller style, tosuit the comprehension of little children; they do not need anysuch dilution. So I go back to the, American First Class Book,"and affirm it to have been one of the best of reading-books,because it gave us children a taste of the finest poetry andprose which had been written in our English tongue, by Britishand by American authors. Among the pieces which left a permanentimpression upon my mind I recall Wirt's description of theeloquent blind preacher to whom he listened in the forestwilderness of the Blue Ridge, a remarkable word-portrait, inwhich the very tones of the sightless speaker's voice seemed tobe reproduced. I believe that the first words I ever rememberedof any sermon were those contained in the grand, brief sentence,--"Socrates died like a philosopher; but Jesus Christ--like aGod!"

Very vivid, too, is the recollection of the exquisite littleprose idyl of "Moss-Side," from "Lights and Shadows of ScottishLife." From the few short words with which it began--"GilbertAinslee was a poor man, and he had been a poor man all the daysof his life"--to the happy waking of his little daughter Margaretout of her fever-sleep with which it ended, it was one sweetpicture of lowly life and honorable poverty irradiated withsacred home-affections, and cheerful in its rustic homeliness asthe blossoms and wild birds of the moorland and the magic touchof Christopher North could make it. I thought as I read--

"How much pleasanter it must be to be poor than to be rich--atleast in Scotland!"

For I was beginning to be made aware that poverty was a possiblevisitation to our own household; and that, in our Cape Ann cornerof Massachusetts, we might find it neither comfortable norpicturesque. After my father's death, our way of living, neverluxurious, grew more and more frugal. Now and then I heardmysterious allusions to "the wolf at the door": and it waswhispered that, to escape him, we might all have to turn ourbacks upon the home where we were born, and find our safety inthe busy world, working among strangers for our daily bread.Before I had reached my tenth year I began to have ratherdisturbed dreams of what it might soon mean for me to "earn myown living."

VII.

BEGINNING TO WORK.

A CHILD does not easily comprehend even the plain fact of death.Though I had looked upon my father's still, pale face in hiscoffin, the impression it left upon me was of sleep; morepeaceful and sacred than common slumber, yet only sleep. Mydreams of him were for a long time so vivid that I would say tomyself, "He was here yesterday; he will be here again to-morrow,"with a feeling that amounted to expectation.

We missed him, we children large and small who made up the yetuntrained home crew, as a ship misses the man at the helm. Hisgrave, clear perception of what was best for us, his brief wordsthat decided, once for all, the course we were to take, had beenfar more to us than we knew.

It was hardest of all for my mother, who had been accustomed todepend entirely upon him. Left with her eight children, theeldest a boy of eighteen years, and with no property except theroof that sheltered us and a small strip of land, her situationwas full of perplexities which we little ones could not at allunderstand. To be fed like the ravens and clothed like the grassof the field seemed to me, for one, a perfectly natural thing,and I often wondered why my mother was so fretted and anxious.

I knew that she believed in God, and in the promises of theBible, and yet she seemed sometimes to forget everything but hertroubles and her helplessness. I felt almost like preaching toher, but I was too small a child to do that, I well knew; so Idid the next best thing I could think of--I sang hymns as ifsinging to myself, while I meant them for her. Sitting at thewindow with my book and my knitting, while she was preparingdinner or supper with a depressed air because she missed theabundant provision to which she held been accustomed, I would gofrom hymn to hymn, selecting those which I thought would be mostcomforting to her, out of the many that my memory-book contained,and taking care to pronounce the words distinctly.

I was glad to observe that she listened to

"Come, ye disconsolate,"

and

"How firm a foundation;"

and that she grew more cheerful; though I did not feel sure thatmy singing cheered her so much as some happier thought that hadcome to her out of her own heart. Nobody but my mother, indeed,would have called my chirping singing. But as she did not seemdispleased, I went on, a little more confidently, with some hymnsthat I loved for their starry suggestions,--

"When marshaled on the nightly plain,"

and

"Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,"

and

"Watchman, tell us of the night?"

The most beautiful picture in the Bible to me, certainly theloveliest in the Old Testament, had always been that one paintedby prophecy, of the time when wild and tame creatures should livetogether in peace, and children should be their fearless play-mates. Even the savage wolf Poverty would be pleasant andneighborly then, no doubt! A Little Child among them, leadingthem, stood looking wistfully down through the soft sunriseof that approaching day, into the cold and darkness of the world.Oh, it would be so much better than the garden of Eden!

Yes, and it would be a great deal better, I thought, to live inthe millennium, than even to die and go to heaven, although somany people around me talked as if that were the most desirablething of all. But I could never understand why, if God sent ushere, we should be in haste to get away, even to go to a pleas-anter place.

I was perplexed by a good many matters besides. I had learned tokeep most of my thoughts to myself, but I did venture to askabout the Ressurrection--how it was that those who had died andgone straight to heaven, and had been singing there for thousandsof years, could have any use for the dust to which their bodieshad returned. Were they not already as alive as they could be? Ifound that there were different ideas of the resurrection among"orthodox" people, even then. I was told however, that this wastoo deep a matter for me, and so I ceased asking questions. But Ipondered the matter of death; what did it mean? The Apostle Paulgave me more light on the subject than any of the ministers did.And, as usual, a poem helped me. It was Pope's Ode, beginningwith,--

"Vital spark of heavenly flame,"--

which I learned out of a reading-book. To die was to "languishinto life." That was the meaning of it! and I loved to repeat tomyself the words,--

A hymn that I learned a little later expressedto me the samesatisfying thought:

"For strangers into life we come,And dying is but going home."

The Apostle's words, with which the song of "The Dying Christianto his Soul" ends, left the whole cloudy question lit up withsunshine, to my childish thoughts:--

"O grave, where is thy 'victory?O death, where is thy sting?"

My father was dead; but that only meant that be bad gone to abetter home than the one be lived in with us, and by and by weshould go home, too.

Meanwhile the millennium was coming, and some people thought itwas very near. And what was the millennium? Why, the time wheneverybody on earth would live just as they do in heaven. Nobodywould be selfish, nobody would be unkind; no! not so much as in asingle thought. What a delightful world this would be to live inthen! Heaven itself could scarcely be much better! Perhaps peoplewould not die at all, but, when the right time came, would slipquietly away into heaven, just as Enoch did.

My father had believed in the near millennium. His very lastwriting, in his sick-room, was a penciled computation, from theprophets, of the time when it would begin. The first ministerwho preached in our church, long before I was born, had studiedthe subject much, and had written books upon this, his favoritetheme. The thought of it was continually breaking out, like bloomand sunshine, from the stern doctrines of the period.

One question in this connection puzzled me a good deal. Werepeople going to be made good in spite of themselves, whether theywanted to or not? And what would be done with the bad ones, ifthere were any left? I did not like to think of their beingkilled off, and yet everybody must be good, or it would not be atrue millennium.

It certainly would not matter much who was rich, and who waspoor, if goodness, and not money, was the thing everybody caredfor. Oh, if the millennium would only begin now! I felt as if itwere hardly fair to me that I should not be here during thosehappy thousand years, when I wanted to so much. But I had notlived even my short life in the world without leading somethingof my own faults and perversities; and when I saw that there wasno sign of an approaching millennium in my heart I had toconclude that it might be a great way off, after all. Yetthe very thought of it brought warmth and illumination to mydreams by day and by night. It was coming, some time! And thepeople who were in heaven would be as glad of it as those whoremained on earth.

That it was a hard world for my mother and her children to livein at present I could not help seeing. The older members of thefamily found occupations by which the domestic burdens werelifted a little; but, with only the three youngest to clothe andto keep at school, there was still much more outgo than income,and my mother's discouragement every day increased.

My eldest brother had gone to sea with a relative who was masterof a merchant vessel in the South American trade. His inclinationled him that way; it seemed to open before him a prospect ofprofitable business, and my mother looked upon him as her futurestay and support.

One day she came in among us children looking strangely excited.I heard her tell some one afterwards that she had just been tohear Father Taylor preach, the sailors minister, whose coming toour town must have been a rare occurrence. His words had touchedher personally, for he had spoken to mothers whose first-born hadleft them to venture upon strange seas and to seek unknown lands.He had even given to the wanderer he described the name of herown absent son Benjamin. "As she left the church she met aneighbor who informed her that the brig "Mexican" had arrived atSalem, in trouble. It was the vessel in which my brother hadsailed only a short time before, expecting to be absent formonths. "Pirates" was the only word we children caught, as shehastened away from the house, not knowing whether her son wasalive or not. Fortunately, the news hardly reached the townbefore my brother himself did. She met him in the street, andbrought him home with her, forgetting all her anxieties in herjoy at his safety.

The "Mexican" had been attacked on the high seas by the piraticalcraft "Panda," robbed of twenty thousand dollars in specie, se

fire, and abandoned to her fate, with the crew fastened down inthe hold. One small skylight had accidentally been overlooked bythe freebooters. The captain discovered it, and making his waythrough it to the deck, succeeded in putting out the fire, elsevessel and sailors would have sunk together, and their fate wouldnever have been known.

Breathlessly we listened whenever my brother would relate thestory, which he did not at all enjoy doing, for a cutlass hadbeen swung over his head, and his life threatened by the pirate'sboatswain, demanding more money, after all had been taken. AGenoese messmate, Iachimo, shortened to plain "Jack" by the"Mexican's" crew, came to see my brother one day, and at thedinner table he went through the whole adventure in pantomime,which we children watched with wide-eyed terror and amusement.For there was some comedy mixed with what had been so nearly atragedy, and Jack made us see the very whites of the black cook'seyes, who, favored by his color, had hidden himself--all exceptthat dilated whiteness--between two great casks in the bold.Jack himself had fallen through a trap-door, was badly hurt, andcould not extricate himself.

It was very ludicrous. Jack crept under the table to show us howhe and the cook made eyes at each other down there in thedarkness, not daring to speak. The pantomime was necessary, forthe Genoese had very little English at his command.

When the pirate crew were brought into Salem for trial, mybrother had the questionable satisfaction of identifying in thecourt-room the ruffian of a boatswain who had threatened hislife. This boatswain and several others of the crew were executedin Boston. The boy found his brief sailor-experience quite enoughfor him, and afterward settled down quietly to the trade of acarpenter.

Changes thickened in the air around us. Not the least among themwas the burning of "our meeting-house," in which we had all beenbaptized. One Sunday morning we children were told, when we woke,that we could not go to meeting that day, because the church wasa heap of smoking ruins. It seemed to me almost like the end ofthe world.

During my father's life, a few years before my birth, histhoughts had been turned towards the new manufacturing towngrowing up on the banks of the Merrimack. He had once taken ajourney there, with the possibility in his mind of making theplace his home, his limited income furnishing no adequate promiseof a maintenance for his large family of daughters. From thebeginning, Lowell had a high reputation for good order, morality,piety, and all that was dear to the old-fashioned New Englander'sheart.

After his death, my mother's thoughts naturally followed thedirection his had taken; and seeing no other opening for herself,she sold her small estate, and moved to Lowell, with theintention of taking a corporation-house for mill-girl boarders.Some of the family objected, for the Old World traditions aboutfactory life were anything but attractive; and they were currentin New England until the experiment at Lowell had shown thatindependent and intelligent workers invariably give their owncharacter to their occupation. My mother had visited Lowell, andshe was willing and glad, knowing all about the place, to make itour home.

The change involved a great deal of work. "Boarders" signified alarge house, many beds, and an indefinite number of people. Suchpiles of sewing accumulated before us! A sewing-bee, volunteeredby the neighbors, reduced the quantity a little, and our child-fingers had to take their part. But the seams of those sheets didlook to me as if they were miles long!

My sister Lida and I had our "stint,"--so much to do every day.It was warm weather, and that made it the more tedious, for wewanted to be running about the fields we were so soon to leave.One day, in sheer desperation, we dragged a sheet up with us intoan apple-tree in the yard, and sat and sewed there through thesummer afternoon, beguiling the irksomeness of our task bytelling stories and guessing riddles.

It was hardest for me to leave the garret and the garden. In theold houses the garret was the children's castle. The roughrafters,--it was always ail unfinished room, otherwise not a truegarret,--the music of the rain on the roof, the worn sea-chestswith their miscellaneous treasures, the blue-roofed cradle thathad sheltered ten blue-eyed babies, the tape-looms and reels andspinning wheels, the herby smells, and the delightful dreamcorners,--these could not be taken with us to the new home.Wonderful people had looked out upon us from under those garret-eaves. Sindbad the Sailor and Baron Munchausen had sometimesstrayed in and told us their unbelievable stories; and we hadthere made acquaintance with the great Caliph Haroun Alraschid.

To go away from the little garden was almost as bad. Its lilacsand peonies were beautiful to me, and in a corner of it was onetiny square of earth that I called my own, where I was at libertyto pull up my pinks and lady's delights every day, to see whetherthey had taken root, and where I could give my lazy morning-gloryseeds a poke, morning after morning, to help them get up andbegin their climb. Oh, I should miss the garden very much indeed!

It did not take long to turn over the new leaf of our homeexperience. One sunny day three of us children, my youngestsister, my brother John, and I, took with my mother the firststage-coach journey of our lives, across Lynnfield plains andover Andover hills to the banks of the Merrimack. We were setdown before an empty house in a yet unfinished brick block, wherewe watched for the big wagon that was to bring our householdgoods.

It came at last; and the novelty of seeing our old furnituresettled in new rooms kept us from being homesick. One afteranother they appeared,--bedsteads, chairs, tables, and, to memost welcome of all, the old mahogany secretary with brass-handled drawers, that had always stood in the "front room" athome. With it came the barrel full of books that had filled itsshelves, and they took their places as naturally as if they hadalways lived in this strange town.

There they all stood again side by side on their shelves, thedear, dull, good old volumes that all my life I had tried in vainto take a sincere Sabbath-day interest in,--Scott's Commentarieson the Bible, Hervey's "Meditations," Young's "Night Thouhts,""Edwards on the Affections," and the Writings of Baxter andDoddridge. Besides these, there were bound volumes of the"Repository Tracts," which I had read and re-read; and thedelightfully miscellaneous "Evangelicana," containing an accountof Gilbert Tennent's wonderful trance; also the "History ofthe Spanish Inquisition," with some painfully realistic illus-trations; a German Dictionary, whose outlandish letters and wordsI liked to puzzle myself over; and a descriptive History ofHamburg, full of fine steel engravings--which last two or threevolumes my father had brought with him from the countries towhich be had sailed in his sea-faring days. A complete set ofthe "Missionary Herald"," unbound, filled the upper shelves.

Other familiar articles journeyed with us: the brass-headedshovel and tongs, that it had been my especial task to keepbright; the two card-tables (which were as unacquainted asourselves with ace, face, and trump); the two china mugs,with their eighteenth-century lady and gentleman figurinescuriosities brought from over the sea, and reverently laid awayby my mother with her choicest relics in the secretary-desk; myfather's miniature, painted in Antwerp, a treasure only shownoccasionally to us children as a holiday treat; and my mother'seasy-chair,--I should have felt as if I had lost her, had thatbeen left behind. The earliest unexpressed ambition of my infancyhad been to grow up and wear a cap, and sit in an easy-chairknitting and look comfortable just as my mother did.

Filled up with these things, the little one-windowed sitting-roomeasily caught the home feeling, and gave it back to us. InanimateObjects do gather into themselves something of the characterof those who live among them, through association; and this alonemakes heirlooms valuable. They are family treasures, because theyare part of the family life, full of memories and inspirations.Bought or sold, they are nothing but old furniture. Nobody canbuy the old associations; and nobody who has really felt howeverything that has been in a home makes part of it, can willing-ly bargain away the old things.

My mother never thought of disposing of her best furniture,whatever her need. It traveled with her in every change of herabiding-place, as long as she lived, so that to us children homeseemed to accompany her wherever she went. And, remaining yet inthe family, it often brings back to me pleasant reminders of mychildhood. No other Bible seems quite so sacred to me as the oldFamily Bible, out of which my father used to read when we wereall gathered around him for worship. To turn its leaves and lookat its pictures was one of our few Sabbath-day indulgences; and Icannot touch it now except with feelings of profound reverence.

For the first time in our lives, my little sister and I becamepupils in a grammar school for both girls and boys, taught by aman. I was put with her into the sixth class, but was sent thevery next day into the first. I did not belong in either, butsomewhere between. And I was very uncomfortable in my promotion,for though the reading and spelling and grammar and geographywere perfectly easy, I had never studied any thing but mentalarithmetic, and did not know how to "do a sum." We had to show,when called up to recite, a slateful of sums, "done" and"proved." No explanations were ever asked of us.

The girl who sat next to me saw my distress, and offered to do mysums for me. I accepted her proposal, feeling, however, that Iwas a miserable cheat. But I was afraid of the master, who wastall and gaunt, and used to stalk across the schoolroom, rightover the desk-tops, to find out if there was any mischief goingon. Once, having caught a boy annoying a seat-mate with a pin, hepunished the offender by pursuing him around the schoolroom,sticking a pin into his shoulder whenever he could overtake him.And he had a fearful leather strap, which was sometimes used evenupon the shrinking palm of a little girl. If he should find outthat I was a pretender and deceiver, as I knew that I was, Icould not guess what might happen to me. He never did, however.I was left unmolested in the ignorance which I deserved. But Inever liked the girl who did my sums, and I fancied she had adecided contempt for me.

There was a friendly looking boy always sitting at the master'sdesk; they called him, the monitor." It was his place to assistscholars who were in trouble about their lessons, but I was toobashful to speak to him, or to ask assistance of anybody. I thinkthat nobody learned much under that regime, and the whole schoolsystem was soon after entirely reorganized.

Our house was quickly filled with a large feminine family. As achild, the gulf between little girlhood and young womanhood hadalways looked to me very wide. I suppose we should get across itby some sudden jump, by and by. But among these new companions ofall ages, from fifteen to thirty years, we slipped into womanhoodwithout knowing when or how.

Most of my mother's boarders were from New Hampshire and Vermont,and there was a fresh, breezy sociability about them which madethem seem almost like a different race of beings from any wechildren had hitherto known.

We helped a little about the housework, before and after school,making beds, trimming lamps, and washing dishes. The heaviestwork was done by a strong Irish girl, my mother always attendingto the cooking herself. She was, however, a better caterer thanthe circumstances required or permitted. She liked to make nicethings for the table, and, having been accustomed to an abundantsupply, could never learn to economize. At a dollar and a quartera week for board,(the price allowed for mill-girls by thecorporations) great care in expenditure was necessary. It was notin my mother's nature closely to calculate costs, and in this waythere came to be a continually increasing leak in the familypurse. The older members of the family did everythingthey could, but it was not enough. I heard it said one day, in adistressed tone, "The children will have to leave school and gointo the mill."

There were many pros and cons between my mother and sistersbefore this was positively decided. The mill-agent did not wantto take us two little girls, but consented on condition we shouldbe sure to attend school tile full number of months prescribedeach year. I, the younger one, was then between eleven and twelveyears old.

I listened to all that was said about it, very much fearing thatI should not be permitted to do the coveted work. For the feelinghad already frequently come to me, that I was the one too many inthe overcrowded family nest. Once, before we left our old home, Ihad heard a neighbor condoling with my mother because there wereso many of us, and her emphatic reply had been a great relief tomy mind:--

"There is isn't one more than I want. I could not spare a singleone of my children."

But her difficulties were increasing, and I thought it would be apleasure to feel that I was not a trouble or burden or expense toanybody. So I went to my first day's work in the mill with alight heart. The novelty of it made it seem easy, and it reallywas not hard, just to change the bobbins on the spinning-framesevery three quarters of an hour or so, with half a dozen othe

little girls who were doing the same thing. When I came back atnight, the family began to pity me for my long, tiresome day'swork, but I laughed and said,--

"Why, it is nothing but fun. It is just like play."

And for a little while it was only a new amusement; I liked itbetter than going to school and "making believe" I was learningwhen I was not. And there was a great deal of play mixed with it.We were not occupied more than half the time. The intervals werespent frolicking around around the spinning-frames, teasing andtalking to the older girls, or entertaining ourselves with thegames and stories in a corner, or exploring with the overseer'spermission, the mysteries of the the carding-room, the dressing-room and the weaving-room.

I never cared much for machinery. The buzzing and hissing andwhizzing of pulleys and rollers and spindles and flyers around meoften grew tiresome. I could not see into their complications, orfeel interested in them. But in a room below us we were sometimesallowed to peer in through a sort of blind door at the greatwater-wheel that carried the works of the whole mill. It was sohuge that we could only watch a few of its spokes at a time, andpart of its dripping rim, moving with a slow, measured strengththrough the darkness that shut it in. It impressed me withsomething of the awe which comes to us in thinking of the greatPower which keeps the mechanism of the universe in motion. Evennow, the remembrance of its large, mysterious movement, in whichevery little motion of every noisy little wheel was involved,brings back to me a verse from one of my favorite hymns:--

There were compensations for being shut in to daily toil soearly. The mill itself had its lessons for us. But it was not,and could not be, the right sort of life for a child, and we werehappy in the knowledge that, at the longest, our employment wasonly to be temporary.

When I took my next three months at the grammar school, every-thing there was changed, and I too was changed. The teachers werekind, and thorough in their instruction; and my mind seemed tohave been ploughed up during that year of work, so that knowledgetook root in it easily. It was a great delight to me to study,and at the end of the three months the master told me that I wasprepared for the high school.

But alas! I could not go. The little money I could earn--onedollar a week, besides the price of my board--was needed in thefamily, and I must return to the mill. It was a severe dis-appointment to me, though I did not say so at home. I did not atall accept the conclusion of a neighbor whom I heard talkingabout it with my mother. His daughter was going to the highschool, and my mother was telling him how sorry she was that Icould not.

Of course I knew that whatever sort of a "head-piece" I had, Idid need and want just that very opportunity to study. I thinkthe solution was then formed, inwardly, that I would go to schoolagain, some time, whatever happened. I went back to my work, butnow without enthusiasm. I had looked through an open door thatI was not willing to see shut upon me.

I began to reflect upon life rather seriously for a girl oftwelve or thirteen. What was I here for? What could I make ofmyself? Must I submit to be carried along with the current, anddo just what everybody else did? No: I knew I should not do that,for there was a certain Myself who was always starting up withher own original plan or aspiration before me, and who was quiteindifferent as to what people, generally thought.Well, I would find out what this Myself was good for, and thatshe should be! It was but the presumption of extreme youth. Howgladly would I know now, after these long years, just why I wassent into the world, and whether I have in any degree fulfilledthe purpose of my being!

In the older times it was seldom said to little girls, as italways has been said to boys, that they ought to have somedefinite plan, while they were children, what to be and do whenthey were grown up. There was usually but one path open beforethem, to become good wives and housekeepers. And the ambition ofmost girls was to follow their mothers' footsteps in thisdirection; a natural and laudable ambition. But girls, as well asboys, must often have been conscious of their own peculiarcapabilities,--must have desired to cultivate and make use oftheir individual powers. When I was growing up, they had alreadybegun to be encouraged to do so. We were often told that it wasour duty to develop any talent we might possess, or at least tolearn how to do some one thing which the world needed, or whichwould make it a pleasanter world.

When I thought what I should best like to do, my first dream--almost a baby's dream--about it was that it would be a fine thingto be a schoolteacher, like Aunt Hannah. Afterward, when I heardthat there were artists, I wished I could some time be one. Aslate and pencil, to draw pictures, was my first request whenever